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My 8 year old daughter, in the 3rd grade has been diagnosed with Auditory Process Disorder (APD) with a decoding deficit and I would like to know if any of you out there have had any experience with this personally, or with your child. Any feedback or opinion would be appreciated.

My child goes to a public school in a progressive area (Greenville, SC) and has been regressing with her grades. She has been tested and doesn't have attention deficit disorder. She knows her material, but seems to have problems when testing. Asking her questions one-on-one, she does well. She is a hands on learner, and doesn't like to read, and most of her issues have to do with reading and comprehension. For example, she may read a paragraph, and not be able to tell you what she just read. There are problems with pronouncing words that are familiar to her. Her grades are starting to regress because she is inconsistent.

She loves any art related project. She has a mellow personality, not majorly gregarious or excitable, but probably because she may be an 'outsider' looking in. She may feel insecure that her grades could be the lowest in the classroom, and I, the mother, am afraid she will not 'fit in' because of this.

I am exploring other teaching and testing opportunities, but any feedback would be helpful.

Did they give her an IEP? If so, I would ask your questions of the teachers administering her case. I have APD myself--something I didn't even know until a couple of years ago b/c I went to school before sped programs were available but I think my experience is somewhat different. The best thing the teacher can do for her is to make sure that any important info that is presented is written down as well as spoken. I am interested in the fact that she doesn't have ADD, as APD and ADD so often go hand in hand, along with the inconsistency.

For your family, I would recommend that when you give her instructions, you need to check to make sure she understands--have her repeat back to you what you need her to know. You could tell me to meet you at the coffeeshop on the corner next Tuesday at 2:00 pm and I would get most of the message but something would get garbled. I would hear Thursday instead of tues, or 4:00 instead of 2:00 or any other number of possible mistakes and I would swear that you said what I thought you did, but this has happened often enough that I know it's me. Had a 4th grade teacher send me up for a hearing test once and I'll never forget the puzzled look on the face of the school nurse that day--they were sure I was deaf, lol. Nope, losing some hearing now but I'm 53.

My 8 year old daughter, in the 3rd grade has been diagnosed with Auditory Process Disorder (APD) with a decoding deficit and I would like to know if any of you out there have had any experience with this personally, or with your child. Any feedback or opinion would be appreciated.

My child goes to a public school in a progressive area (Greenville, SC) and has been regressing with her grades. She has been tested and doesn't have attention deficit disorder. She knows her material, but seems to have problems when testing. Asking her questions one-on-one, she does well. She is a hands on learner, and doesn't like to read, and most of her issues have to do with reading and comprehension. For example, she may read a paragraph, and not be able to tell you what she just read. There are problems with pronouncing words that are familiar to her. Her grades are starting to regress because she is inconsistent.

She loves any art related project. She has a mellow personality, not majorly gregarious or excitable, but probably because she may be an 'outsider' looking in. She may feel insecure that her grades could be the lowest in the classroom, and I, the mother, am afraid she will not 'fit in' because of this.

I am exploring other teaching and testing opportunities, but any feedback would be helpful.

APD is not a disease, just a test result, and possible cause of a learning disability. Learning disabilities are also not diseases - they are particular disabilities that occur only in the context of a classroom. That said, this one is common as far as learning disabilities go. It's so common, sometimes I wonder if it even exists and isn't some kind of catch all for learning disabilities.

You don't give a lot of details - like what grade level she is reading at, for example. Impossible to say anything with so little information, but sounds like she comprehends OK but doesn't decode (pronounce) words well when reading and doesn't comprehend as a result of that. I know a lot of people with similar problems (at one time we called it dyslexia), and many of them have advanced degrees, even PhD's. It shouldn't make any difference if she gets the help she needs. There are many good methods of learning to read well in spite of this disability - it's just harder. Sometimes schools do not have sufficient staff or knowledge to do this, however. You should ask if she has an IEP, how many hours of extra help she will get from a qualified spec ed teacher (NOT a spec ed aid), and what strategies they intend to use to help her overcome that reading problem. One thing to watch out for is grades - her grades may go up if she has an IEP because they will stop grading her on same standards, but that doesn't mean she is improving. You have to keep on top of it and ask regularly for her reading level. If it's not going up, or she seems to be unhappy or struggling or feels unfairly treated at school (like she's treated differently), I would strongly suggest a qualified reading tutor. I would look for someone certified in teaching reading and working with decoding problems. I would suggest avoiding advocates of "whole language" instead of phonics, or who talk too much about a "balanced" approach and don't seem to have specific ideas about how to teach reading to LD students in a way that is different than what is traditionally done in a classroom.

I might add that despite my problems with APD, I am a very strong reader and taught my own self to read with the picture dictionary. I was impatient with all the worksheets so I would pretend to be finished and go over to the book corner to steal a few minutes here and there with that dictionary and I guess I may have learned with the whole language method. I taught my dd with phonics direct instruction and she's also a very strong reader but then she has no ADD or APD that I can tell.

APD is not a disease, just a test result, and possible cause of a learning disability. Learning disabilities are also not diseases - they are particular disabilities that occur only in the context of a classroom. That said, this one is common as far as learning disabilities go. It's so common, sometimes I wonder if it even exists and isn't some kind of catch all for learning disabilities.
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Ughhh! I hate when people posts things like this. This is obviously someone who knows nothing about these issues. Auditory processing disorder can only be diagnosed by an audiologist. It is different than learning disabilities that require educational testing by a psychologist. Plus, the kind of problems a student is experiencing make a HUGE difference on how the issue is handled.

My oldest daughter has a developmental auditory processing disorder. She saw a learning specialist twice a week for a few years to work on her auditory skills. They required her to do such tasks as writing down sentences that are verbally given to her, which works on improving auditory memory. They also worked on teaching her the mouth movements required for certain sounds. When my daughter was concentrating on the feel of the letters more than the sound of the letters, this really helped.

My daughter has improved a lot with age. One thing that really helped her was that she joined a children's chorus because she loves singing. The chorus members were required to memorize songs and were tested weekly on them. This auditory task that she enjoyed more than school made a huge difference.

We are still working some on some content comprehension issues. That takes practice as well. There are books that have content comprehension practice exercises. This may help. You also can ask the school about providing auditory services. Good luck.

My 8 year old daughter, in the 3rd grade has been diagnosed with Auditory Process Disorder (APD) with a decoding deficit and I would like to know if any of you out there have had any experience with this personally, or with your child. Any feedback or opinion would be appreciated.

My child goes to a public school in a progressive area (Greenville, SC) and has been regressing with her grades. She has been tested and doesn't have attention deficit disorder. She knows her material, but seems to have problems when testing. Asking her questions one-on-one, she does well. She is a hands on learner, and doesn't like to read, and most of her issues have to do with reading and comprehension. For example, she may read a paragraph, and not be able to tell you what she just read. There are problems with pronouncing words that are familiar to her. Her grades are starting to regress because she is inconsistent.

She loves any art related project. She has a mellow personality, not majorly gregarious or excitable, but probably because she may be an 'outsider' looking in. She may feel insecure that her grades could be the lowest in the classroom, and I, the mother, am afraid she will not 'fit in' because of this.

I am exploring other teaching and testing opportunities, but any feedback would be helpful.

Is the APD & reading diagnosis from a clinical psychologist or the school special education team? If you had this testing done in outside of school be sure to share this with the teacher. If it was given by the school an IEP should have accompanied it. The IEP should have provided accommodations for your daughter. These will allow her to perform tasks/tests differently to access what she really knows about a subject. Her learning environment can be adjusted as well to meet her needs and maximize her learning in the classroom. With that said the IEP isn't going to be the "cure-all". If you have the resources, I would look to see if there are any Orton-Gillingham (OG) tutors in your area. The OG approach is a bigger comprehensive literacy approach for students with reading disabilities. This approach is well known for being a multi-sensory approach. This incorporates many of the senses to help develop learning pathways. With APD, you daughter can benefit from using as many senses in the learning process as possible to help retain the information she has learned. OG tutoring sessions should be one on one to give your daughter the attentions she needs. If an OG tutor isn't available you want to look for an OG-based reading intervention. There are many OG based reading programs out there but a computer will never trump a good instructor. Alphabetic phonics and Take Flight are some of the better OG based programs to use if a OG tutor isn't available. OG based programs cannot be pulled off a shelf and used, tutors need to be trained and spend hours learning the approach.
That kind of specialized instruction isn't possible in public education or at least not in any schools I've worked in. I observe teachers everyday and the classroom instruction is designed to try and reach the most students possible. Instruction is usually not multi-sensory. Many times students are just left to themselves to read & answer questions. Hope this is helpful, post any questions you might have.

I'm studying this in school right now. They are teaching us that Auditory Processing Disorders are not well understood, and that the effort to break down auditory processing problems down into different categories is logical...but that it's important to remember that there is still really no good evidence. I'm not saying that APD doesn't exist, just that more research is needed to understand it.

In fact, I believe a lot of my own problems stem from an APD. I was never a great student, and it is just now that I have figured out how to study with the greatest benefit. It's frustrating when you put in the same efforts as your friends and classmates and don't see the same type of results.

I have found that typing makes all the difference in the world. Now I listen to lectures, read the transcripts and lecture notes, and then type out the lecture notes onto an online study site that allows you to make your own note cards. I know your daughter is young, but writing/typing information may help her. I know it's helped me tremendously.

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